STUDENTSí CORNER - 40

This time, we
will look into the relationship between Education and GDP. What is true of
Health is true of Education also. Higher GDP generally indicates the country
with higher GDP will allot more money to Education than a country with lesser
GDP can.

Giving education
to the young so as to make them ready to face life in general is the obligation
of the State and the Central Governments. Of course, it is needless to say that
it is the primary duty of the parents.

The country needs educated persons to run the
administration of the country which has innumerable divisions; the industries,
the companies, the corporate firms---all need efficient persons to manage their
business. Without adequate efficient educated persons, the country will not be
able to stay strong in the domestic and international market. Therefore,
setting aside huge money for education, to start educational institutions of
standard and to arrange to give education to all the children of the country,
cannot be avoided. For the present
purpose, we shall not go into details of Higher Education as a domain that
comes under the Central and the State governments. We will focus on Education
as an indicator of quality of life of an individual.

To begin with,
what is the function of education in a society, in the life of an individual?
An individual of a family has to learn the culture of his society, the religion
of his parents, his community, the social and communal conventions of the
society he belongs. That is, the individual must have cultural education. Then, the individual needs some job to earn
his livelihood and for that, he needs education that enables him to do the job
efficiently. That is, the individual needs formal academic education to make
himself fit for the job. Of course, the
individual also needs another kind of education; that is, religious education,
spiritual education. Here, we are
concerned only with that education which brings him employment as employment
results in income, a revenue generation of a kind. And basically GDP and
economic status of an individual, of a state, of a country are inter-related.

Today, all
political leaders of all nations agree that education is the major driver of
economic growth besides it being an effective medium of transmission of
cultural heritage and traditions to the younger generations. There are plenty
of levels in education; that is, there is technical education and non-technical
education. Generally, those with degrees in technical education have better
opportunities of earlier employment.

Education must
lead to employment. It implies too many critical facts and the most significant
of them is the individual must acquire knowledge and then be able to apply it
in job-situations. In other words, skill is essential for anyone to get
employed and to continue on employment.
Highly skilled and competent people get generally good jobs with fat
payment; and less skilled and competent people get jobs that do not fetch them
high salaries.

People with high
salaries can command greater and sophisticated comforts in life; and, they earn
social recognition. Their standard of living will have a better quality of life
compared with those who are not in good salaries. The highly salaried people
are more economically prosperous. These are all common facts everybody knows.
It means ultimately that a socially responsible parent gives good education to
his children in such a way that they come off well in their education and find
themselves placed in envious jobs.

Higher GDP,
therefore, indicates that people better placed in life economically are greater
in number in that society. Education has become a major industry, a big
business today and people with lesser income find it extremely difficult to
give good education to their children in good institutions. This fact takes us
into a totally different domain for study with which we are not concerned at
present.

We will take up
some other factor as an indicator of quality of life in relation to GDP in our
next session.